A Mythology of Circles

American minimalism has spawned three generations of composers, with Faten Kanaan emerging from the last wave. Interestingly, the Brooklyn resident loops her proposals without using samplers, sequencers, or arpeggiators. Specifically, she strives to create variations based on the contrapuntal repetition and interweaving of musical phrases, narrative wefts gently elongated and placed on our eardrums, but uses synthesizers, oscillators, and other machines to create her strings of richly textured patterns. At the extreme end of the spectrum of this circular mythology, two motets; choral singing is the probative material of an eminently contemplative art, close to the natural cycles observed at dusk and deep within oneself, in the depths of dreams traversed by Sumerian and Greek myths – she herself says so! Echoes of ancient and sacred music also haunt her works, which are generally agreeable, yet imbued with mystery and innovative textures. Like many contemporary composers, Kanaan seems to be fascinated by both the latest technological processes and the earliest forms of sound creation; her fascination with the myths of ancient Greece and Mesopotamia is understandable. This first album is also an autobiographical diffraction transposed into music, “a story of movement, migration and return. Renewed hope in the face of political and environmental struggles,” she says. Beyond the meaning associated with the work, the more one listens to Faten Kanaan’s work, the more one discovers its depth and mysterious contours.